The £150 Console Killer: Resurrecting the AMD BC-250
Experimental Hardware Warning
The AMD BC-250 is not a standard consumer product. It requires Linux (specifically Bazzite/SteamOS builds), has no display outputs without adaptors or specific configurations, and requires some technical know-how to get running. This is a project for tinkerers, not a plug-and-play solution.
Budget PC gaming usually means compromise. You hunt for a used GPU, maybe an old office Dell Optiplex, and pray the power supply handles it. The mythical "£150 gaming PC" has basically been impossible since 2018.
Until now. A wave of peculiar hardware has hit the secondary market: the AMD BC-250. It’s ugly, it’s weird, and it was never capable of running a game... until the community got hold of it.
(Image credit: Budget-Builds Official on YouTube)
What is this thing?
The BC-250 (Blockchain Compute) is a refugee from the crypto boom. It’s a motherboard and CPU/GPU combo on a single PCB, designed purely for mining farms. It has no HDMI ports, no fancy shroud, and no retail box.
Where it gets interesting is the silicon. Under the heatsink sits an AMD APU codenamed "Oberon" — the exact same silicon found in the Sony PlayStation 5 (or at least, a close sibling of it).
The Specs
- Zen 2 CPU Cores (8 Cores / 16 Threads)
- RDNA 2 Integrated Graphics
- 16GB GDDR6 Unified Memory
"It is distinctly console-class hardware, just without the plastic shell."
The "Steam Machine" Build
Because this board lacks standard outputs, you can't just install Windows and expect it to work like a normal desktop. The community solution is to treat it like a dedicated console.
By installing Bazzite (a specialized version of Linux that mimics the Steam Deck OS), the BC-250 transforms. It boots directly into Steam Big Picture Mode. The drivers are pre-baked. The quirks are managed.
(Image credit: YouTube - ETA PRIME)
Performance: What £150 Gets You
Let's be real: this isn't an RTX 4090 killer. But for the price of a generic office monitor, you are getting performance that trades blows with the Steam Deck and entry-level dedicated GPUs.
- 1080p Gaming: Capable of 60 FPS in esports titles (Overwatch 2, Valorant - via Linux workarounds, Apex Legends).
- AAA Titles: Playable frame rates in modern titles like Cyberpunk 2077 or Elden Ring at 30-40 FPS with optimised settings (FSR is your friend here).
- Emulation Powerhouse: Because it has 8 Zen 2 cores, it devours emulation tasks from PS2 up to Switch era content.
The Catch (There's Always One)
We cannot stress this enough: There are no future shipments of these cards.
Once the mining surplus dries up, they are gone. AMD is not making more. This is a finite window of opportunity to grab a piece of hardware history that performs way above its pay grade.